The official blog of Laemmle Theatres
Astrophysicists Marja Seidel and Johanna Teske will participate in Q&A’s at the Ahrya Fine Arts after the Friday 7:20 CIELO screening (Dr. Seidel) and the Saturday 7:20 show (Dr. Teske). Both have spent time at the Chilean observatory that is featured in the film.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3962T4ZZyUI
LICENCE TO KILL actor Robert Davi will participate in a Q&A after the screening at the NoHo on Thursday, August 23.
Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 65th anniversary screening of one of the most beloved Westerns of all time, George Stevens’ production of SHANE.
The 1950s happened to be a golden age for cowboy sagas, and as the Hollywood Reporter observed, “George Stevens’ SHANE earns a place along with ‘High Noon’ and ‘The Gunfighter’ as one of the great tumbleweed sagas of the decade.” Or as Leonard Maltin declared decades later, “Classic Western is splendid in every way.”
Alan Ladd, Paramount’s biggest star of the era, plays a mysterious gunfighter who arrives in a small Western town and finds a turf war between the farmers and cattle ranchers who want to drive them off the land.
Shane decides to become a protector of these homesteaders and strikes up a friendship with one family; Van Heflin plays the father, Jean Arthur (in her final screen performance) plays the mother, and young actor Brandon De Wilde plays their son, Joey.
Jack Palance was cast as the villain of the piece, a black-clad gunslinger hired by the cattle ranchers to eliminate Shane, along with the rest of the farmers.
The supporting cast includes gifted character actors Ben Johnson, Edgar Buchanan, Emile Meyer, and Elisha Cook Jr. Ladd received the best reviews of his career for the picture. The Saturday Review wrote, “As Shane, Alan Ladd has one of his best roles and gives what is surely his most rewarding performance.”
Stevens had won the Academy Award for best director of 1951 for ‘A Place in the Sun.’ SHANE gave him his third nomination in the directing category (he would win a second Oscar for ‘Giant’ in 1956).
SHANE earned six nominations in all, including Best Picture and two nods in the supporting actor category, for both Palance and De Wilde. The Oscar-nominated screenplay was written by A.B. Guthrie Jr., who adapted the novel by Jack Schaefer. The picture won the Oscar for the magnificent color cinematography of Loyal Griggs.
In tune with the fashions of the era, Stevens chose to shoot on location in the magnificent Grand Tetons outside Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
Because of the care he took with the production, the film went over budget, and the studio was nervous. But the film turned out to be a box office smash and proved enticing to adult and family audiences alike. Kids who saw the move in 1953 are not likely to forget the emotional ending and young De Wilde’s cry, “Come back, Shane!”
Joining us for a Q&A will be David Ladd, the son of Alan Ladd. David went on to be a popular child actor in the 1950s. He appeared with his father in two films, ‘The Big Land’ and ‘The Proud Rebel;’ he then starred on his own in two family hits, ‘Misty’ and ‘A Dog of Flanders.’ He went on to act in a few films as an adult but then segued into a career as producer and studio executive.
SHANE screens on Sunday, August 26, at 3pm at Ahrya Fine Arts Theatre. Click here for tickets.
Format: DCP
This just in…
RESTORING TOMORROW filmmaker Aaron Wolf will participate in Q&A’s at select screenings with a variety of special guests. Join the conversation. Join the movement. This is a special moment for all cultures to come together and join the discussion, leaving with hope and a drive to take action.
Confirmed Q&A’s at Encino Town Center after the 7:30PM screenings on August 24th, 25th and the 3PM screening on August 26th.
August 27th at 7:30PM at the Ahrya Fine Arts.
August 28th at 7:30PM at the Laemmle Glendale.
August 29th at 7:30PM at NoHo 7.
August 30th at 7:30PM at Pasadena Playhouse 7.
Rabbi Steve Leder will join Aaron for the August 26th and 27th screenings. Other special guests TBA.
You can also see the filmmaker interviewed on Good Day L.A. here.
Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present the latest offering in our Anniversary Classics Abroad program, Kon Ichikawa’s poignant family drama, THE MAKIOKA SISTERS.
One of the great Japanese masters, Ichikawa is perhaps less widely celebrated than his countrymen Kurosawa, Mizoguchi, and Ozu. He began directing features in the 1940s, and his films The Burmese Harp, Fires on the Plain, Tokyo Olympiad, and others found passionate critical defenders.
One of his later films, THE MAKIOKA SISTERS, is adapted from a popular Japanese novel by Junichiro Tanizaki and follows the fortunes of four sisters from a wealthy family in Osaka. Set in the 1930s on the eve of World War II, the film stars Keiko Kishi, Yoshiko Sakuma, Sayuri Yoshinaga, and Yuko Kotegawa as the orphaned sisters, heirs in a wealthy manufacturing family. Their marriages and romantic relationships are a source of tension and jealousy.
The sumptuous art direction and costume design help to create the lush atmosphere of the film. Reviewing the film at the time of its American release, the Los Angeles Times’s Kevin Thomas called it “exquisitely, subtly sensual.”
John Powers of the L.A. Weekly agreed that “this is an uncommonly vibrant and beautiful film.”
And the New Yorker’s Pauline Kael called it “the most pleasurable movie I’ve seen in several months…the rich colors, the darkness, the low-key lighting—they’re intoxicating.”
THE MAKIOKA SISTERS (1983) screens on Wednesday, August 22, at 7pm in Encino, Pasadena, and West LA. Click here for tickets.
Format: Blu-ray
Laemmle’s Art in the Arthouse presents ISABELLA KELLY-RAMIREZ: WHO IS SHE? Explore the bold, dynamic works of Kelly-Ramirez on Wednesday, September 5 in our intimate theatre setting. Our special event features a slideshow on the big screen, artist talk, and refreshments. Meet Isabella and stay for the wine, cheese, and conversation Art in the Arthouse is known for. A portion of the sales benefit the Laemmle Foundation and its support of humanitarian and environmental causes in Los Angeles.
About the Exhibit
Isabella Kelly-Ramirez creates paintings and collages that introduce a host of fascinating females. Modern-day saints and superheroes, champions of the avant-garde, and fashionable figures to be reckoned with; these are icons of a new mythology from the imagination of the artist. Her arresting collages are playful acts of defiance. Kelly-Ramirez coopts images from fashion and art magazines, repurposing them to create surreal urban legends and ironic emblems of commercialism.
The works address the unattainable standards of beauty in fashion and life by reconstituting mainstream imagery into something quirkier and more humane. Kelly-Ramirez’s visual world continues in the striking paintings framed in soft sculpture. Bright, colorful portraits of humanoid figures appear in whimsical, unearthly settings. Somehow this creative, alternative place is more human, more generous, and more authentic than our curated “reality.”
Isabella Kelly-Ramirez lives and works in Los Angeles. Born in Santa Barbara, she has been involved in the art and theatre communities since she was a child. She received her B.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2008 and works primarily in painting, collage, soft sculpture, and assemblage—with a pop surrealist flair.
– Stacey Ravel Abarbanel, Curator
Artist Reception
MONICA FILM CENTER
Wednesday, September 5, 7-9pm
1332 2nd Street
Santa Monica, CA 90401
Refreshments will be provided
The director, producer and several cast members of MAKING A KILLING will participate in a Q&A after the opening night screening.
Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a tribute to one of most popular stars in Hollywood history, Cary Grant, in two of his most entertaining movies.
The program, part of the Twofer Tuesday series of double bills (two-for-the-price-of one) features a 55th anniversary screening of CHARADE (1963) paired with a 70th anniversary screening of MR. BLANDINGS BUILDS HIS DREAM HOUSE (1948) at three Laemmle locations: the Royal, NoHo 7 and Playhouse 7.
Cary Grant is remembered for his elegance, casualness and charm As writer Tom Wolfe once put it, he is “consummately romantic and consummately genteel.” These two movies showcase all the facets of his timeless appeal.
MR. BLANDINGS BUILDS HIS DREAM HOUSE is a genial comedy adapted from a novel by Eric Hodges (screenplay by Melvin Frank and Norman Panama) about a married advertising executive (Grant) with two daughters in post-WWII Manhattan who decides to leave the crowded city for the country life.
Myrna Loy, one of the popular female stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age, plays his disarming wife and, according to Leonard Maltin, “no one ever described room colors better than Loy!” Melvyn Douglas plays a “friend of the family” who causes comic complications for Grant.
Directed by H.C. Potter (‘The Farmer’s Daughter’) with black-and-white cinematography by the great James Wong Howe, the film was the inspiration for the Tom Hanks’s 1986 comedy ‘The Money Pit.’
CHARADE is a tongue-in-cheek thriller set in Paris with Audrey Hepburn as a recent widow being pursued by villainous thugs for a cache of stolen money involving her murdered husband.
Grant plays an American stranger allegedly “helping” Hepburn. Stylishly directed by Stanley Donen (‘Singin’ in the Rain,’ ‘Two for the Road’) and written by Peter Stone (‘1776,’ ‘The Taking of Pelham One Two Three’) and Marc Behm, the film is a cross between screwball black comedy and Hitchcockian suspense.
Bosley Crowther of the New York Times called it “a fast-moving urbane entertainment,” with Variety citing Grant as the “suave master of romantic banter.” Grant and Hepburn make for a delightful team, and a terrific supporting cast features turns by three future Oscar winners, all in the supporting actor category: Walter Matthau, James Coburn and George Kennedy.
The Oscar-nominated music (Best Song) is by Henry Mancini. The film was a smash hit in 1963, and kept Grant in the top ten box office stars poll that year.
We present the Twofer Tuesday Cary Grant double bill as a refreshing movie tonic to help beat the summer heat. MR. BLANDINGS BUILDS HIS DREAM HOUSE plays at 5:00 pm and 9:30 pm; CHARADE at 7:00 pm on Tuesday, August 14 at the Royal, NoHo 7 and Playhouse 7.
Click here to buy tickets for the 5:00pm MR. BLANDINGS with the 7:00pm, CHARADE included. Click here to buy tickets for the 7:00pm CHARADE with the 9:30pm MR. BLANDINGS included.
CHARADE Format: DCP
MR. BLANDINGS Format: DVD